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Abstract

Organizations are inserted into a competitive environment in which innovation is an essential factor in gaining temporary competitive advantages. The search for external sources of knowledge, which can contribute to the innovation process, has become a constant among the organizations. One of the actors involved in this search is users, who often play an important role in the development of new products. This chapter develops a framework for the analysis of users’ involvement in the innovation process through Web 2.0. The research method used a unique case study conducted in a Brazilian automotive company that developed a project of a concept car involving users through Web 2.0. The presented study case was analyzed according to the framework. The obtained result shows that users can contribute not only with idea generation, but also with involvement in the innovation process, depending on which steps of the New Product Development (NPD) process they take part in. Moreover, increasingly users’ development, participation, and collaboration are essential factors in this process.

Open Innovation

The open innovation model was proposed for the management of innovation and is based on the necessities of the companies to open up their innovation processes and to combine internal and external development of technology for the value creation in business. The term open innovation was firstly proposed by Chesbrough (2003), and it refers to the organizations capacity of searching ideas, information and knowledge outside the organizational environment. For Chesbrough (2003), the innovation processes of companies that are intensive in technology are changing from the “closed innovation” for the “open innovation” model. The open innovation emphasizes the importance of the use of external knowledge for the best development of the innovation process.